The UN Human Rights Office has recently launched a major online database of Treaty Bodies’ case law, which is known as Jurisprudence, http://juris.ohchr.org. It forms as a starting resource of the human rights recommendations and findings issued by various Committees* in their work on individual cases.

It contains case law indexed by various categories with search criteria including Region, State, year of publication, subject keywords, sessions and type of decisions.

* The Committees that can receive and consider individual complaints are:

Human Rights Committee (CCPR)
Committee against Torture (CAT)
Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD)
Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)
Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED)
Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR)
Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC)

The UN Dag Hammarskjöld Library is collaborating with the Library of the United Nations Office at Geneva in digitizing pre-1993 UN documents. Documents in the six official languages are scanned, processed for full text retrieval, and uploaded to the ODS (UN Official Documents System). The updated checklist in PDF format of pre-1993 UN parliamentary documents that have been digitized and uploaded can be downloaded from the webpage of United Nations Depository Libraries with last update on December 2014.

To share ideas of outreach activities, promote interests in global UN issues and encourage the use of UN information resources, Dag Hammarskjöld Library has recently launched a Global Outreach Map.With this map, feedback about the kind of research works related to the collection of UN documents and publications, list of promotional activities and training workshops organized by the UN Depository Libraries will be published.Click on link to view the map now,http://www.un.org/depts/dhl/deplib/index.html

The WomenWatch website is dedicated to providing “information and resources on gender equality and empowerment of women.” It is an initiative of the United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality (IANWGE) and the site is a veritable cornucopia of information on this vast and timely subject. In the Quick Links and Features, visitors can view the UN Gender Equality News Feed, which is a great way to get a sense of the main issues affecting women around the world. Moving on, the Documents and Publications area contains seminal reports such as “Seeing Beyond the State: Grassroots Women’s Perspectives on Corruption and Anti-Corruption.” Also, the News and Highlight s area contains links to partner organizations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. These links include radio clips, news releases, and other key pieces of information.

The Gifts of Speech site brings together speeches given by women from all around the world. The site is under the direction of Liz Linton Kent Leon, who is the electronic resources librarian at Sweet Briar College. First-time users may wish to click on the How To… area to learn how to navigate the site. Of course, the FAQ area is a great way to learn about the site as well, and it should not be missed as it tells about the origin story for the site. In the Collections area, visitors can listen in to all of the Nobel Lectures delivered by female recipients and look at a list of the top 100 speeches in American history as determined by a group of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Texas A & M Univ ersity. Users will also want to use the Browse area to look over talks by women from Robin Abrams to Begum Kahaleda Zia, the former prime minster of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh.

This year is the 50th edition of the United Nations Handbook which is published annually since 1961 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, New Zealand as a ready reference guide. This handbook provides current and useful information on all the UN family organisations, including their aims, evolutions, structures, memberships and an overview of activities.